After the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued an emergency use authorization late Dec. 11 for a COVID-19 vaccine, health care facilities in Texas will begin receiving doses Dec. 14, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services.

The Centers of Disease Control and Prevention have allocated 1.4 million initial doses of the vaccine from Pfizer and BioNTech to Texas. Of those 1.4 million, the state has a plan to allocate more than 224,000 doses to 109 health care institutions the week of Dec. 14 for frontline health care workers. Eleven facilities in Central Texas are slated to receive a total of 16,575 doses in the initial shipment.

Facilities in the state’s four largest cities will be first to receive the vaccine Dec. 14, including UT Health Austin and Dell Medical School at the University of Texas, DSHS confirmed. The other three facilities receiving doses are Wellness 360 at UT Health San Antonio, the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and Methodist Dallas Medical Center.

An additional 19 facilities are set to receive their first doses of the vaccine Dec. 15. The remaining 86 institutions tabbed to accept initial shipments would then receive their first doses later in the week. The full list of facilities to receive shipments Dec. 14 and Dec. 15, according to the state, is as follows:

Dec. 14:
  • Wellness 360 (UT Health San Antonio), San Antonio
  • Methodist Dallas Medical Center, Dallas
  • UT Health Austin/Dell Medical School, Austin
  • MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston
Dec. 15:
  • Texas Tech University Health Science Center, Amarillo
  • Christus Spohn Health System Shoreline, Corpus Christi
  • Parkland Hospital, Dallas
  • UT Southwestern, Dallas
  • Doctors Hospital at Renaissance, Edinburg
  • UT Health RGV, Edinburg
  • University Medical Center, El Paso
  • Texas Health Resources Medical Support, Fort Worth
  • University of Texas Medical Branch Hospital, Galveston
  • Texas Children's Hospital, Houston
  • Lyndon B. Johnson Hospital, Houston
  • CHI St. Luke's Health, Houston
  • Memorial Hermann Texas Medical Center, Houston
  • Houston Methodist Hospital, Houston
  • Ben Taub General Hospital, Houston
  • Convenant Medical Center, Lubbock
  • Shannon Pharmacy, San Angelo
  • Baylor Scott and White Medical Center, Temple
  • UT Health Science Center, Tyler
The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was the first to receive FDA emergency use authorization, which allows vaccines to be distributed in emergencies without formal FDA approval. Other vaccines remain in the works, including one produced by Moderna, which is set to be be reviewed by an FDA advisory committee on Dec. 17.